The second part of the year in review is now done! I apologize for the delay, as things were busy not only during December, but throughout much of January as well. I also got sick during the holiday break, preventing me from being able to record the necessary audio to even begin video editing.

However, I managed to push through and beat the latest deadline I made for myself: end of January.

I’ve gotta say, working on these two videos back-to-back with a deadline on each was quite the learning experience. At the very least, I am far more comfortable working in Adobe Premiere Elements now, enough so that I am surprised it took me so long to make the jump. I was very attached to my process with Windows Movie Maker 6, but it was clear that it was time to move on to something more modern and far more capable. Premiere Elements still doesn’t have the full suite of options most content creators are utilizing, but it certainly allows for more control over what I can do in a video and how I can integrate sound than before.

However, I’ve been learning a lot of other lessons working on these.

While it was nice to do an anthology video for part one, it was less exciting for part two. In fact, the deadline felt like an even tighter vice compared to the two-to-three months of time I could afford to release part one. As a result, part two has a sloppier script and even some sloppier editing, and while I could have waited another day to make some minor adjustments, I feel it would not have been worth it. I’ve gotten a far better work flow going with layered scripting, audio editing, and video editing, but there’s only so much touching up that can be done so late in the process.

Even if I could spend some extra time touching up, however, I would not want to. A single thirty-some minute video in which I can clear my head, get into the video making process, and put out something is nice, but having to do two in a row as my desire and motivation to work on something more substantial continues to build is less nice. The past several weeks I’ve been mentally done with this video, even as I touched up the script and did my best to put it together. I don’t regret the decision to split the year in review up into two separate videos, but I can also see based on analytics that, while the first video is getting around the algorithm and making impressions, it’s also not getting a lot of clicks. What clicks it does get don’t result in folks staying around. More than view count, I care about engagement duration, and while the number of viewers that watch the whole thing are far outnumbered by those that click in and check out, the year in review has pretty poor numbers.

Still, it was not a loss. I’m glad to enjoy this hobby, and I’m glad to confirm that what I really like doing are the deeper dives. I have several scripts already in various stages of progress, and I have a priority at which I’ll be working on these different projects. However, I do have obligations outside of my channel to be focusing on now that this video is done, so I do not know when the next video will be released.

In fact, it may be best that I take about two months per video minimum, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Not every script is a deep-dive analysis, so it could be that I can get a steadier, more reliable upload schedule going by pacing the projects out wisely. I’ll be doing some experimenting through 2024 to find out.